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Transcript
Hey everyone, in this episode we’re talking about the difference between leaders and managers, or leadership and management.
And it’s important because, just like we talked about in the last episode when it comes to the definition of leadership, how we define things is important. But also, just like there’s a lot of confusion about leadership, there’s confusion in the same way with manager versus leader.
People often confuse, you’ll hear a lot of different things about what a leader is and what the manager is. There’s lots of the cliches and memes and infographics out there that talk about leaders and managers and how managers are these really evil people and do horrible things and leaders are these angels who float in the air with halos in their heads.
And all these things that compare leaders and managers, and there’s a lot of confusion out there. And I remember just me, when I was really kind of diving more into leadership, and I was trying to write articles, too.
I was trying to dive into leadership, trying to put stuff in my blog and my website to help others with leadership and I was looking at leadership versus management, and there was so much confusion out there. It took me a while to really, looking at different things, you know, one person book would say this, another thing would be this.
Sometimes they focus on functions or process and sometimes people talk about leaders are visionary and managers just do the whatever other work and there’s a lot of different things.
But when I read Julie Zhao’s book called The Making of a Manager, to me her definition or her explanation, and I’m going to paraphrase it, but this is kind of what she talked about in her book and it really stuck out to me because to me it was a good clarification of exactly what the difference is.
So Julie Zhao’s book, The Making of a Manager, it says that, “Leadership is a skill, management is a position. You don’t have to have a position to be a leader, but you can’t be a good manager without also being a good leader.”
Pretty simple and I agree with that. It makes a lot of sense and it really clearly defines the difference between the two, and it’s accurate.
Let’s kind of dive into it a little bit more. We’ve talked about some of this before, that leadership is a skill. It’s not a position. You can be a leader in any position.
When I was in different positions, in different companies, I used to think, man, I wanted to lead, I wanted to be a leader, but I was like, man, I have to have a position to lead. People aren’t gonna follow me if I have a position, but man, when I have a position, oh, then people will have to do what I say.
Obviously that’s the wrong mentality for multiple reasons, but that was kind of my thought, is that people would follow me once I had the position. And that’s just not true.
You can lead from any position because leadership’s built off influence. And you can influence people from any position. You can learn the skills for leadership in any position. You can be the lowest level in the company and be a leader for those around you.
Management is a position. You have to be hired or put in that position or put yourself in that position if you are a business owner to be a manager. It’s not something that you just learn and oh, I’m a manager. No, it’s a position that you have to be in to be a manager.
And management, it depends on the company and maybe the industry possibly and the job, what your exact functions may be. But generally management often has very similar functions. Hiring, maybe firing, planning, training, whatever it may be, they’re set functions that you have as a manager and there’s skills that go along with those functions. But management is a position.
But you also have to be a leader and learn those leadership skills to be a good manager because you are leading people. And sometimes people’s like, “Well, you are not a leader because leaders cast vision. You have to be able to cast vision to be a leader.”
And I understand that, but if you remember our definition, from the last episode, it’s guiding people toward the accomplishment of a goal. The process where you guide people to the accomplishment of a goal.
Nowhere in that definition says that you have to be the one to create that goal. You can lead from any position in the company. You can take on the mission and the goals of your company and own them and lead your team toward them. As even as a first-level manager, you can lead your team.
And to be effective, you have to lead your team. You have to be a leader and do the good functions of leadership, the good skills and everything. You have to be able to lead. And even in that, even if you’re the first line manager, you can set goals with your team based off the goals of that.
If your company is not one that has strong values, you can help establish strong values for your team. You can lead from any position. You don’t even have to be a manager to lead. But to be a good manager, you have to be a leader too.
And really that’s why we have, honestly, a lot of those cliches and memes and infographics and why we have so many bad managers today. And I know I say that a lot probably on my blogs and stuff because the reason I say that is because if we just look around we can understand that we do. I think it was a 2021 Gallup poll or study, survey, whatever they did, they found only 32, 36 percent, something like that of employees were engaged.
So like 60 something percent of employees in America were disengaged. And worldwide, 80% were disengaged. That’s like huge. And they said over different surveys, sort of different things, over 50% of people have left the position because of management.
So, and then you look at so many things going on, we are struggling in leadership and our management struggle. And a lot of that is because managers, people don’t realize that managers have to be leaders too.
And because of that confusion of leadership, because of the confusion between those two, we get those memes and infographics because people don’t understand that managers have to lead. It’s part of the skillset that you need to have to be an effective manager.
And there’s so much… we’ll probably get to that in one of the next episodes… is why we have that struggle because part of it’s training. People aren’t trained in leadership or managers aren’t trained. Sometimes they’re not trained at all. They get moved up to a position and they just assume that they know how to manage or know how to lead and you don’t. It’s something you have to learn.
And then there’s training or if the training is one and done, sometimes people, again, don’t understand the importance of leadership so it’s not taught. I mean, there’s so many things, factors that I hope through this podcast and through the stuff I do and hopefully like I’m like seriously listen to Jocko Willink, Simon Sinek, all those others. Grow yourself.
Nobody should have to work for a bad leader. Everybody should have the opportunity to work for a great leader. Great leadership should be the norm, not the abnormality of our world. We need more leadership. We need to train. We need the managers to know leadership.
I know I kind of went off topic. Again, leadership is a skill. You don’t have to have a position, management is a position, but you can’t be a good manager without being also, without also being a good leader. See you next time.
